Let's Talk About Biomedical Engineering

Hello, I Hope you all are fine and I welcome you to my blog once again and thanks for the constant encouragement.

Introduction

---

Biomedical engineering is a discipline that uses different field of engineering to save human life. More like biology with engineering, more focused on the human body with the engineering fields.

The fields involved in biomedical engineering are Mechanical engineering, Electrical engineering, materials engineering, biology, computer science and computer engineering. Biomedical engineering is putting good use of this disciplines to manufacture an equipment, device or a medicine that is used for the human body. We all know human part replacement are not easy to come by.

Biomedical engineering is divided into 3 main fields.

• Biomechanics
• Bioinstrumentation
• Tissue engineering

BIOMECHANICS:

This part is the mechanical aspect of Bioengineering, basically for those who have interest in maths and physics of the mechanical movement and structure of the human body and even various devices. It also included designing the structure of artificial limbs, analyzing the forces of them and the force they exert in the body.

BIOINSTRUMENTATION:

This is the electrical engineering aspect which deals with designing of the electronics within the media last equipments and devices. It is also about programming the artificial limb to move based on electric signal that are been picked up in the body, it also about processing and analyzing signals form the heart, muscles and brain and finally creating circuits and programming devices to manipulate the signals where necessary.

TISSUE ENGINEERING

This is the biology focus, where you actually print a 3D organ using various cells and the mechanical, electrical and computer engineers will design the 3D printing system.
Tissue engineering involve how to create a biomaterial that could replace a certain part of a body without the body reacting negatively to it like tweaking cells and generating artificial tissue like using someone's skin cells and genetically engineering them to create artificial intelligence skin that can help burn victims.

Lets see examples

---

The common career opportunity generally for biomedical engineers in the society today is making artificial limbs, this artificial limbs are for people who have probably lost their limbs or planning to amputate their limb either one or two the biomedical engineering would make it The biomedical engineer will have to design the structure to be almost the same with the normal human limbs that should be able to deliver almost the same amount of force and weight.

He will design the mechanical structure to maintain the best quality of life for the person. Taking for example if the artificial limb is too heavy it would most likely cause strain on other part of the body which may cause other unforseen problems for the person. Well that is for the mechanical engineers to figure out.

Another is making a fist, when a person tries to make a fist all the body systems are sending electric signals to those muscles to enable it know what to do. What the biomedical engineer would do is attach an electrode near to where the limb was removed, the electrode would read those electric signals when the person wants to make a fist and then the signals would be processed and sent to a device that will tell the artificial arm to make a fist when the person wants to make a fist even if the person don't have a hand. This is the electrical engineering and programming aspect of biomedical engineering.

Also there are times this artificial limbs comes with rod that is inserted into the person's body for better attachment. At the end of the rod inside the person's body, there is a coating that encourages the bone to grow onto the rod for more mechanical secure attachment. When you understand the chemicals that works with the bone in the human body that is the biological aspect of the Bioengineering.

Another Example is a situation whereby a person has type 1 diabetes, meaning the body most likely cannot produce insulin. What to do is create a customized beta cells that would produce insulin and then inject them into the body of the person but the immune system kills it off. Now the biomedical engineer makes and engineered beta cells and surround them with polyethylene glycol and that is the material the immune system won't kill so the insulin can still be supplied from the beta cells inside the body without being killed.

Another examples is where somebody is involved in an accident and part of the person's skull is removed. The biomedical engineer creates a biomaterial that the body won't negatively react to and the material can be used as a temporary support for the missing portion and then over time the bone tissue begins to grow over the material and the the material is been dissolved and then excreted by the body. The fact that it is a biomaterial the body won't have problem with it dissolving into the system and the missing part would then be healed over with natural tissue. The only con here is that the engineer has to look for a material that has the life span appropriate for how the injury will heal and make sure it breaks down at the right rate.

---

_{The current advancement of biomedical engineering is designing and printing 3D organs to be used in the human body like artificial heart, liver as well as kidney.}

---

They recreate by giving organs cell by cell using a very precise syringe and various cells needed. Mostly used in the military to help wounded soldier who need a transplant.

When it comes to the heart the biomedical engineer would work on the defibrillator (the device that provides large shock to the person's chest to try to revive the person) that is external, there is an internal defibrillator that is located inside the person's body and it has sensors that detects when the person heart needs a jump and automatically the defibrillator provides the shock needed. This sensors detect electric signals from the heart normally but when the signals start changing in a life threatening way the defibrillator provides the shock.

The nerves, muscles and heart are very electrically active in our body, so we can sense and manipulate those signals for useful things. Biomedical engineers can also make pacemakers that uses small electric pulse to keep the heart beat rhythm consistent, when the heart starts to go from consistent beating to abnormal beating the device can provide a small shock to get it back to normal.

In a situation whereby a person has a chronic pain in the body that is not relates to any injury the biomedical engineer can use a device to interrupt or add interference to the pain signals as it travels to the brain. That can replace the pain feeling or reduce it to help the person cope with the it.

Conclusion

---

The biomedical engineering is wide and provide you are an engineer you could find where to fit in and sometimes it not really advisable to major on biomedical engineering because you would be limited to just biomedical engineering but when you have degree of one of the field that makes up the biomedical engineering you could function as a biomedical engineer depending on what you are good at.